Ringwood murder-suicide exposes a deeper mystery

In a string of circumstances that could have been drawn from a crime novel, two men with troubled pasts — but little in common — were found dead in Ringwood early Monday in a murder-suicide in which a motive remains a mystery.

The men were acquaintances, but authorities did not elaborate on how they knew each other. One was an avid gamer and disbarred lawyer who collected guns. The younger man was a sports junkie — with no apparent ties to Ringwood — who frequently was in trouble, most recently in a car-theft arrest last week.

Chief Assistant Passaic County Prosecutor Michael DeMarco said in a statement that borough police found the bodies of Seth Gunar, 43, and Christopher Coogan, 23, inside a Cupsaw Drive residence just before 1 a.m. Monday after receiving a report of gunfire. Both had apparent gunshot wounds, he said.

Police recovered a handgun and spent shell casings and will conduct a ballistics examination, which could reveal which man did the shooting. The medical examiner was expected to perform autopsies late Monday.

Police Chief Bernard Lombardo confirmed that the incident was a murder-suicide.

As authorities investigated a motive, Coogan’s family, devastated by the news, also was searching for answers.

“They’re really out of their mind at this point,” Coogan’s uncle, Richard, said of his parents. “They’re still figuring out what exactly happened.”

Richard Coogan said his nephew was one of nine children who lived with his family in Stony Point for 20 years. In recent years, he acknowledged that Christopher had become a “troubled kid.”

Just last week, Coogan was charged with grand larceny after allegedly stealing a car, according to a report in the Rockland County Times. At the same time, a housemate in Stony Point was charged with criminal possession of a weapon — an unlicensed and loaded 9mm handgun, the report said.

Rockland County Jail records show that Coogan was arrested on Jan. 26 and released on Jan. 29.

“He was a sports kid, had a girlfriend in high school,” Richard Coogan said. “Everything looked straight and narrow, and I don’t know what happened after high school.”

A woman who answered the phone at the Stony Point house said that she was too distraught to talk. “We’re very devastated at this moment,” she said.

A neighbor of Coogan’s family said she was “shocked when I heard it, but not surprised. It’s sad.”

In Ringwood, Gunar had rented the Cupsaw Drive house from Beth Eliasof, a real estate agent who lives down the block. She said she had no problems with him and that he sometimes joined her on walks with her dog.

“Seth was a nice guy, he kept to himself, always waved, always said hi,” she said.

A woman who said she was a longtime friend of Gunar’s described him as a “brilliant man” who was knowledgeable about many subjects, including music and history.

He was also an avid gun collector, said the woman, who asked not to be named.

“Any subject that would come up, it was like he had an encyclopedic knowledge,” said the friend, who described Gunar as “a young man in search of himself.”

Gunar was a prolific gamer, listed on websites as a previous president of the Jersey Gamers Association and two-time champion of a stock car racing board game competition. He was quoted in a 2009 article in The Record describing his visit to a meeting of board game players during a Florida vacation, saying he took comfort in being able to find such gatherings “just about anywhere in the world.”

In April 2012, Gunar, a lawyer, was disbarred in New York over professional misconduct charges, according to court records. A grievance committee accused him of not cooperating with its requests and failing to reregister as a lawyer with the courts.

The longtime friend of Gunar’s said he had been working as a teacher in Newark until two years ago. At about that time, he moved out of a Mahwah apartment complex and into the Ringwood house with younger roommates whom he had met at a local gaming center.

It’s not clear if Gunar lived with anyone at the time of his death, but Eliasof said two other tenants moved out of the house a year ago.

Neighbors on Cupsaw Drive said Monday morning that two or three men lived in the house, and noted that a car the men seemed to have shared hadn’t been moved in a long time.

Police on Monday morning pulled stacks of letters, including a utility disconnect notice, from the mailbox.

A light remained on in the front room at 82 Cupsaw Drive, where a screen window dangled precariously by one corner. Another window was covered with a flag with the American Revolutionary War slogan, “Don’t tread on me.”

Neighbors said most people along the road know one another and stop to talk. That was not often the case with the men who had moved into the house as tenants.

“I’d see the guy and try to strike up a conversation, but it was like pulling teeth,” said next-door neighbor Chris Oettinger.

He said the car parked in front of the house had not been moved in the last two snowstorms.

Both Oettinger and Henry Heilferty, a neighbor across the street, said they thought they heard a single firework go off late Sunday night, but dismissed it as a bit of post-Super Bowl revelry. It could not be determined whether the sound was related to the murder-suicide.

Oettinger said he first learned there had been a shooting when a police officer came to his door about 2:30 a.m. Monday to ask if he had heard anything unusual.

“I’m still in shock,” Oettinger said around 9 a.m. “I don’t know that it’s completely set in. It is scary.”